


The Story of a Life

by Radiday



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 23:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16586369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiday/pseuds/Radiday
Summary: "It’s been thirty years today, but sometimes it seems like it’s been a whole lifetime. I mean, it has. But sometimes, it feels like it was just yesterday. Feels like I still need him.”





	The Story of a Life

**Author's Note:**

> I've had about a thousand different stories in my head after that flashback episode but this was the first one that came to mind. Also, we're just going to ignore the fact that this episode totally screwed with the timeline they'd had before? It's cool.

They all know the day. Can’t forget it, no matter how hard they try. 

Hermione will never forget the frantic call she’d received that night, a mere half an hour after she’d seen Fred last, after he’d dropped her off in front of her door with a kiss on her lips.

She’ll never forget that that was the last time she saw Fred Andrews - the _real_ Fred Andrews, the one who loved music and baseball and drummed on his desk before class started.

She’ll never forget the panic, the incomprehensible sobbing and begging and pleading of Fred’s voice on the phone. He’s got her on the line but he’s not talking to her, instead shouting at his father to _please wake up. You have to wake up, Dad._

Hermione knows from half a mile away that Fred’s dad will not wake up. Fred knows it too, she thinks, but it doesn’t stop him from begging. He hangs up on her, eventually, and it’s in that moment that she knows what needs to be done.

She calls FP, who calls Tom Keller, because Tommy’s dad’s the sheriff and maybe there’s something he can do, something he knows-

_I can’t bring a man back from the dead, Tommy._

Hermione and FP get there at about the same time, their shadows long and dark where they stand in the lights of the police cruisers and ambulance pulling into the driveway.

They beat the cops and paramedics to the door, see Fred’s face, ashen and pale, at the top of the stairs telling them to _hurry, please hurry. You have to save him._

They all know. They all know that Artie Andrews cannot be saved. But Fred stands over the paramedics, hovering, watching, begging them to do their jobs and _save him, please._

FP will never forget the strength it took for him to keep Fred from lunging at the paramedics. He’ll never forget the way Fred clawed at him, desperately trying to free himself from the grasp. His touch was not comforting, not gentle and kind the way Hermione’s was. His hold on Fred was firm, using all his effort just _to get Fred out of there._

Fred scratched, and punched, and kicked - FP’s got a scar on the back of his hand to prove it - but his hold was too tight. He’ll never forget pulling Fred’s head into his chest to keep him from looking. From watching as they put his father into a body bag.

He’ll never forget because thirty, _thirty_ years later, after Fred’s had his own brush with death, Fred will wake up crying in the middle of the night because he was _so afraid_ lying there in Pop’s. But he had Archie with him and his dad had nobody, and _he must have been so scared, FP, he was all alone-_

Alice can’t ever forget, even though she wasn’t there. They were exactly friends, her and Fred, even though he might have called them that. He used to be the kind of person that called everybody a friend.

She won’t ever forget how he traded in his guitar that month, or how he traded in his regular attire for flannels and never went back. She sees it, every day, when they become neighbors, and wonders if the old Fred is still in there somewhere, buried under heartache and responsibility and one too many beers.

She watches as he falls apart and puts himself back together time and time again - after Mary leaves, after he gets shot, after Archie gets sent to juvie. Wonders if the old Fred is unsalvageable, eroded by time and misfortune.

No, she wasn’t there when it happened, but she was there two days after the shooting when Fred had woken up in a drug-induced haze and reached for her and called her Dad and asked why he left, _why did you leave me, Dad? I wasn’t ready._

She’ll never forget that she went along with it, told Fred she loved him, ran her fingers through his hair and soothed him back to sleep. She’ll never forget it even though she’s vowed to never mention it to him.

It’s Fred that can’t remember. That night, hell, that whole _month_ , was a blur. His only memory of finding his father is just that - finding his dad, tucked in his bed, his eyelids just barely open.

He’d almost left it, that’s what he remembers. He’d assumed his father was asleep and thought he should take a shower and try to come down from the fucking fizzle rocks before he told his father he was home.

But Artie Andrews snored like a chainsaw, even in his sickness, and Fred made it halfway to his bathroom before he realized there was no sound coming out of his parents’ bedroom.

That’s the last thing he remembers. Or maybe, it’s the last thing he wants to remember. The hours that follow are a blur of lights and voices and people touching him -

 _Don’t fucking touch me._ He remembers saying that. He has no idea who he said it to.

Betty asks him one day. Not about his dad, per say, but about that stupid ascension party. Looks at him with the same pity Alice did and he knows, _he knows,_ right then, that Betty knows. But she never says anything, not about that, so neither does he.

He tells her what she already knows, because Alice had already spilled the beans on their high school horror story and leaves it at that. When she leaves, she says she’s sorry, and he asks her what about and she shrugs. About the game, about your principal. _About your dad_ , is what she means, and they both know it.

And then that day rolls around, the day that’s making them all remember. The day that sends Hermione over to the construction site with an ulterior motive. The day where she spends an hour talking though a project she already knows everything about, only to press her perfectly manicured fingers into Fred’s chest and asks how he’s doing, with sincerity and fear and the past all reflecting in her eyes.

He tells her he’s fine and leaves her in the cold and dingy trailer to see herself out because he is not going to cry in front of Hermione Lodge today.

He’s not fine, of course. Wants nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep through this day entirely, but he can’t, because Archie’s home now and he can’t afford to lose it just because he wants his dad back.

FP’s the next one to ask. He doesn’t approach it like Hermione, he knows better. He stops by the diner when Fred’s picking up lunch and saunters over like he hadn’t been planning this and mentions they’re having that meeting in the church tonight, _you know, Fred, the one they don’t have so much anymore,_ if _you wanna come with me._

He knows he should, but he says no anyways. He doesn’t want to talk about his problems, any of his problems. Not today. Maybe not ever.

Hell, Alice even tries, stops by the house when he’s back from work, when Archie’s cracked open his history book on the coffee table, furiously trying to catch up the work he’d missed when he was locked up.

She brings them soup, says she made too much, says Fred looked tired and maybe he didn’t want to worry about dinner tonight.

She knows he’s tired because she knows the dreams, _the nightmares_ , Fred gets this time of year. She’s been around him enough to know that Fred’s solution to dreaming about his dead father is just not sleeping at all.

Archie notices too, that day, because his mom told him once, when Fred was in a particularly grumpy mood – rare for him – that this was the day his father died. He’d made a mental note of the date, made it a point to go easy on his dad in the days surrounding. Neither of them ever said anything, of course, a son too afraid of hurting his father and a father too afraid of hurting his son.

He’d known today was particularly bad, because his father’s been off since he’d come downstairs that morning, when Archie was already on the phone with his grandmother. She’d wanted to talk to Fred, but Archie couldn’t seem to stop and get him to look him in the eye. He said that he was running late even though Archie knows Fred doesn’t leave until eight and it’s only seven fifteen and Fred just looks at him with desperate eyes and says _would you just tell her that, please, I’ll call her later._

He sits there now and watches as Alice thrusts the container of soup into Fred’s hands and nearly invites herself in, watches as his dad carefully maneuvers to stop her, thank her, and all but shut the door in her face.

Fred serves the soup, a vegetable beef mix, for dinner anyways because Alice was right. He _was_ exhausted, _is_ exhausted, hasn’t slept all week exhausted. And Archie tries to prod gently, poke the bear without waking it, but part of him, the selfish part, he thinks, is angry because Artie was Archie’s grandpa too, and he knows next to nothing about him. Doesn’t even know how he died.

But the rest of him remembers how afraid he was when he held Fred, blood pooling out of his abdomen, in his arms and lets himself think, for just a second, what would’ve happened if he’d lost his dad that day, and suddenly he’s got a renewed sense of empathy.

But his father won’t budge, no matter how many _are you okay’s_ and _you look tired’s_ and _are you sure there’s nothing wrong_ he or anyone else throws at him, so Archie’s out of options.

He’s got one more trick up his sleeve, the kind that’s going to make things worse before they get better, if it goes the way he hopes. So, he puts his spoon down and looks his father dead in the eye and says _I know what day it is, Dad._

He watches his father go pale as a sheet in a blink-and-you-miss kind of way before he regains his composure and sips his soup and says _I’m fine, Archie._

Archie almost feels bad,  _almost_ , but he’s committed now, so he abruptly stands from the chair and tells his father he’s not hungry anymore and throws in there that Artie was his grandpa too and he knows nothing about him and that’s just not fair because _you keep it all inside, Dad._

He knows his plan worked when Fred knocked on door a half hour later and sits on the edge of his bed.

“He had cancer,” Fred starts, and once again, Archie feels bad, because he doesn’t want his father to relive his dad’s death, but he knows Fred’s seconds away from bursting if he doesn’t let it out.

“I was seventeen, and there was this party,” he lies, because there is no chance in hell he’ll tell his son about the game they all played back then. “On a school night, no less. And Grandma was in Greendale visiting her sister that night and she told me to look out for Dad. But he heard me on the phone telling Hermione I couldn’t go out and Dad – he just wouldn’t hear of it. Which was weird, because he would usually ground me for weeks at the mere thought of going out on a weeknight. He told me I had to go, and so I did.”

The shaky breath he lets out keeps the tears at bay. “And I got high, and I remember thinking, before I left, that I hope dad’s asleep when I get back, because he would know that I was high and then he’d never let me go anywhere again. But I got home and I checked on him and he –“

This breath doesn’t stop the tears from escaping. Fred wipes them away. “He wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t wake him up. And, to be honest, that’s all I remember from that night. From that week.”

More tears escape. “And I don’t like to talk about it, I don’t like to think about it, because when I do _I hate myself_. Sometimes I hate him too. And he doesn’t deserve that.”

“Neither do you.” Archie’s voice is quiet, but mature and soothing, and for once, Fred doesn’t feel the typical pang of guilt that comes with burdening your child with old baggage.

“Sometimes, I’m just so angry that he left me, that he never got to see me graduate, or get married. Or meet you.” He laughs, but it comes out like a sob. Archie reaches for his hand. “He would’ve liked you. I mean, he would’ve loved you, of course, but he would’ve liked you. He didn’t always like me.” This time the laugh sounds like a laugh.

He wipes the final wet spot from his cheek. “It’s been thirty years today, but sometimes it seems like it’s been a whole lifetime. I mean, it _has_. But sometimes, it feels like it was just yesterday. Feels like I still need him.”

They lapse into silence after that, Fred’s words ringing in Archie’s ear. _Sometimes, it feels like I still need him._

Archie can’t ever imagine not needing his father, and all at once he feels such a deep sorrow for his father that he has to stop himself from throwing his arms around him and never letting go.

But then he decides that life’s too short, so he does just that. Reaches over and puts his arms around his father’s neck, determined to be the strong one for once.

And Fred doesn’t hesitate, not even for a minute, because that’s who Fred is. Not the artist anymore, not the athlete, but the dad. The dad his father taught him how to be.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.


End file.
